YouTube and Business- The Golden Ticket

If you are a business owner and have been reading our blogs here at Turn The Page Online Marketing and you are on the newer side of your social media experience, you might be saying to yourself, “OK, I get it. I get that social media is the ‘new way’ to reach my prospective buyers. I get that people are online. I get that the ‘old way’ of using “interruptive marketing” (i.e. direct mail, radio commercials, TV commercials, cold calling) although garnering a little success, (2% for direct mail- really?) is a lot of money (printing and postage, and if you use bulk mail rates, your bags of direct mail pieces sit at the post office dock with no promises of mailing on or before a specific date- which is a bummer for the call to action deadlines that you printed on them) and it isn’t very green. If you ride in the car with a teenager, a radio commercial invokes a visceral reaction to switch to another station. A television commercial during Mad Men (my favorite show) is my cue to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer, vacuum a room or clean up in the kitchen- again (the kids were watching something else downstairs and had their commercial break.)

Speaking of TV, according to the A.C. Neilson Company, the average American (and this unfortunately includes children) watches more than 4 hours of TV each day or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year. In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube. Why do you suppose that is? Is it boredom or entertainment? My $20 is on the latter. Now we get to the point of this blog: YouTube and business.

Let’s say you own a business and you have a website. You could be capitalizing on the entertainment value that YouTube brings to the table called your website and also utilizing it as a valuable piece of your educational puzzle. You and I learn in one of three ways: auditory (gotta hear it), kinesthetic (gotta touch it) or visual (gotta see it). Light bulb. Exploring the pages of your website your visitors will find a page that has content on who you are, a page on what you do, possibly a page on how you do what you do and there are pages on what you offer that people can either buy, get involved with or do something with. Having lots of extraordinary content (with key words related to your industry) is important for your audience and your search engines, and using YouTube videos on your site has the added benefit for the visual and auditory audience that wants to see and hear and for some of us – like me- who like videos because we/I simply get bored. Keep me in the game and keep me on your page!

If you ever thoughtfully pondered how YouTube fits into your business strategy for expanding your customers base, getting more potential customers in your sales funnel and then closing the deal (getting the check) then using YouTube for Business may just be the ticket for you.

Think of it this way, your website is much like your Super Bowl. This is your big game where yo get to show the world what you’re made of. You want people to go there, spend time there and then pick up the phone and call you to buy or buy right there on your site. YouTube videos inside your website are like your Super bowl commercials. In 2011 the Packers beat the Stealers while 111 million people watched. Now, I am not a big football fan. I know there are a ton of people out there who love football and watch football on TV. I am not one of them. I am the one who eagerly anticipates the super bowl commercials. Even if you did tune in for the football, you stayed for the Super Bowl commercials. That is why food, which ordinarily does not make it out of the kitchen for fear that something will be spilled on the carpet, miraculously finds its way to a smorgasbord in the family room on Super bowl Sunday. It’s the commercials. There is a just as much buzz around who will win the super bowl as there is the entertainment value and interest in the commercials. Why? The commercials are creative. Some make you think. They are fun. Some make you laugh out loud. They keep you engaged. They keep you in the room. Light bulb. Adding You Tube videos to your website that you create and load from your own YouTube channel are your super bowl commercials. They encourage visitors to stay on your site. They can make your site even more interesting and/or more exciting. What’s another cool part about this? It can go viral. When a website is interesting, exciting and/or funny – your website visitors tell, share and link their friends (post it to Facebook) or colleagues (LinkedIn) to your site driving more impressions, more interaction and more sales! Hey, that’s it! That’s the golden ticket! You have the golden ticket! Charlie Bucket found the golden ticket!

Remember what Willie Wonka tells Charlie after he gets the ticket and watches the rest of the kids get picked off one by one, floats to the ceiling after drinking a fizzy lifting drink and is almost killed by giant fan blades then gives the ever-lasting gobstopper back to prove he is worthy and Mr. Wonka gives him the entire chocolate factory to live in with his family… “Don’t forget about what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted. He lived happily ever after.”